Restaurant challenges rat claim
‘Impossible’ for rodent to get into chowder undetected, owner says
The owner of a Gastown restaurant where a customer was filmed spooning an intact rat from her bowl of chowder said it would have been “impossible” for the animal to get into the food undetected by staff.
Contessa Choe’s friend posted the unappealing image to Instagram social media, and it went viral, causing the Crab Park Chowdery to lose 75 per cent of its customers overnight. People since have been discussing whether or not it was a hoax by the two women or a hygiene breach at the restaurant.
Choe dismissed suggestions they staged the video.
“Why would I do that?” she said. “Why would I bring a rat into the restaurant. Where would I even get a rat from? Why would I get a rat and bring it into the restaurant and put it in the soup. That’s f---ing ridiculous.”
She immediately apologized for swearing, but said she’s been frustrated by online comments impugning her intentions and even calling her a racially charged name.
“I didn’t even want to post it,” she said, adding her friend, who moved here recently from Ukraine and was in the habit of documenting everything she experienced, posted the video.
“This is exactly the backlash I didn’t want,” said Choe.
Her friend, called Adele or Adelaine, didn’t return a message posted to her Instagram account.
Owner Ashton Phillips said he thoroughly investigated the women’s claim by going to great lengths to replicate the production of soup under similar circumstances, including using a dead rat.
“We went and got a rat because we wanted to be as authentic as possible,” he said.
He said they repeated the process of stirring and filling bread bowls and weren’t able to fill a bowl without noticing the rodent in the steel vat, eight-ounce ladle, or bowl with a diameter of about four inches.
“We’re baffled,” he said. “We soaked it (the rat) for four hours to see if it would float or sink. You could clearly see the rat there. It was buoyant and it was impossible not to see it. We couldn’t dispense of it without part of the rat sticking out. When we were filling the bowl, this large chunk fell into the bowl.”
He also said the 50-gallon steam kettle the soup was cooked in was lidded and it was impossible for pests to enter, and the other 20-litre containers are placed on brackets 3.5 feet above the floor.
While Phillips said he didn’t want to unduly criticize the women, he said there were a number of factors that made him question the veracity of the short video.
“There’s not much of a reac- tion,” he said. “If I found a rat in my soup, I think I would be a little freaked out. They were pretty nonchalant.”
He also said the women took some photos before complaining to the server.
And he questioned why Choe’s friend posted the photo to an Instagram account with 33 followers, one she hadn’t used in a year, instead of the account she was posting other photos on to many followers.
He also questioned why Choe accepted a $100 gift certificate to the same restaurant where they had been served a rat.
Choe said all she wanted was a refund for the soup and said she has no intentions of using the gift certificate and has thrown it out.
Choe, a 24-year-old student, said she was tired of the attention the posting has brought her.
She said “I hope not” when asked if she thought she might face a lawsuit.
The soup was produced in the rented basement of Mamie Taylor’s restaurant, a business arrangement that has since ended, at the request of Mamie’s owner, said Phillips.